2023-24 Friend in Education Award Announcement
We are excited to announce this evening the 2023-24 Friend in Education Award. This award is designed to honor and recognize a member of the Smoky Valley community that provides support and service to our students, staff, and administration. This year’s honoree is Kale Kuhlmann.
Kale grew up in Stockton, Kansas, and earned a degree in business administration at Wichita State University. In the summer of 2020 (right during the height of the COVID pandemic) he was hired in a newly created position at Lindsborg Community Hospital as the Executive Assistant. In this role, he provides critical administrative support to the Hospital administrator, directors, supervisors, and the Board of Trustees. He wears many hats at LCH, but in particular, he is the LCH safety officer, medical staff coordinator, and most importantly to why he is being recognized this evening, he is the hospital’s Education Program Coordinator.
About a year ago, Smoky Valley administration reached out to LCH to design and implement a student internship program at the hospital. The Health Care Science Internship program was developed and has been successfully providing daily on the job career experiences for Smoky Valley students since August. To say that this program would not have been successful, let alone possible, without Kale’s support is an understatement. Kale has been a critical liaison between the hospital and the high school team to develop the program; everything from developing a personalized internship schedule for each student, providing “new employee” training to the students, monitoring attendance, and coordinating two evaluations for each intern by the end of each semester.
Additionally, Kale has been a reliable source of help in other career exploration activities. He assists Joyce Peterson with one-day job shadowing experiences at the hospital and clinic and he helps get LCH staff to present at our Career Speaker programs.
We are appreciative of Kale’s work and his partnership in helping Smoky Valley students map out their career pathways in the health sciences – for these reasons, we are pleased to recognize him as our Friend in Education.